After a zero-coverage press conference by Ta Ann critic, British journalist Clare Rewcastle, in Hobart this week, today’s Mercury has a lead letter from Ta Ann attacking Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown.

A public forum for Ms Rewcastle at Salamanca Inn last night was filmed throughout by two Ta Ann employees.

“My images of an indigenous man sidelined by a log truck in Sarawak and of an Orangutan are every bit as illustrative of this giant logging company’s impacts as generic images used every day in Tasmania’s forest debate,” Senator Brown said.

“Ta Ann is a company which has benefitted from political cronyism and the destruction of Indigenous people’s rainforests in Sarawak.

“Does the company deny either assertion?

“Now it is set to become the chief force destroying Tasmania’s wild forests. It deserves much closer scrutiny,” Senator Brown said.

My concern is: Will Ta Ann be sufficiently heedless, rapacious and destructive as to satisfy the standards of Minister Bryan, who has found even the Forest Practices Authority to be too green for his tastes.

“Now it is set to become the chief force destroying Tasmania’s wild forests…..” . Factually incorrect !!

Posted by Brian G on 29/09/11 at 10:02 PM

Re #2. 2.“Misleading in so many ways” Too true, Robin Halton!

How’s this for the real story?

Ta Ann is one of 49 companies blacklisted by the Bruno Manser Fund for its close links with the Taibs. The company is controlled by Hamed Sepawi, a cousin of the Sarawak Chief Minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud (“Taib”) and by Wahab Dolah, a Member of the Malaysian Parliament for Taib’s party, PBB. The group controls 362’000 hectares of logging concessions and 313’000 hectares of plantation concessions in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak. All these concessions have been granted to Ta Ann without public tender.

Ta Ann chairman, Abdul Hamed Sepawi, is a key crony and business ally of the Sarawak Chief Minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud, one of South East Asia’s longest-serving and most corrupt politicians. The WWF’s partnership with Ta Ann has recently been criticized by Global Witness because of the timber group’s responsibility for large-scale destructive logging in the Heart of Borneo, one of the WWF’s priority conservation regions.

Bruno Manser Fund,
Socinstrasse 37,
4051 Basel, Switzerland

And:-

KUCHING: Sarawak’s Ta Ann Holdings, the world’s biggest hardwood timber company in terms of market capitalisation, and which is closely linked to Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, has declared losses in its Tasmanian venture.

The disclosure has come as a rude shock to Tasmanian parliamentarian Senator Bob Brown who heads Australia’s Green Party.

According to him, the recorded losses are next to an impossible feat considering that Ta Ann had managed to secure “A$10 million in direct public subsidies” and perks.

“Since it began operation in Tasmania, Ta Ann has made a net loss of about A$18 million, despite receiving A$10 million in direct public subsidies and being housed in premises which cost Forestry Tasmania A$22 million and which it runs at a loss.

Ta Ann’s only customer is its parent company, so how easy is it to paot a loss and get reduced prices for high grade timber and avoid local taxation. All it means is another rogue industry for us to subsidise way into the future!

And by rejecting the $270 million IGA deal from the Feds, this is what the MLC’s, the Government and Forestry Tasmania are foisting on us!

Posted by Barnaby Drake on 30/09/11 at 01:58 AM

I attended the talk and film by Clare Rewcastle last night and all my worst fears were confirmed about this company.To think that we have allowed a firm with such an appalling record to establish itself here in Tasmania beggars belief. Their dubious practices include threats, intimidation, environmental vandalism, crushing of any opposition from indigenous dwellers in the original pristine rain forest, government corruption, rigged elections, nepotism and the list goes on.

Posted by Estelle Ross on 30/09/11 at 08:25 AM

The Ta Ann letters in the Examiner and Merc screeched that the photos shown were not Ta Ann’a work.

Maybe they weren’t, but they were the work of Chief Minister Taib’s family dynasty, which controls nearly all of the logging operations in Sarawak, including Ta Ann.

They have destroyed all but 5% of the lush tropical forest which covered the vast majority of the state in 1979/80 when I visited. This was accomplished in a state twice the size of Tasmania.

How lucky was the Taib gang to find a new lair in Tassie?

John Hayward

Posted by john hayward on 30/09/11 at 04:39 PM

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